Last week the Nuffies from Malaysia and Singapore went for our first company trip ever (Nuffnang Philippines and Australia had their own because of the distance). We’ve always talked about a company trip over the years but we never got around to do it. This year though we decided we had to.
Two options were put the vote. The first was a trip to Hong Kong Disneyland and the second was a cruise on Royal Caribbean’s cruise lines. The Nuffies chose the cruise. So last week for the first time ever, the KL and Singapore offices closed and operations from Nuffnang, ChurpChurp, Nom Nom Media and Netccentric were put on auto-pilot.
The cruise was a 5 day trip. Most of it was some team-bonding activities but we also had a day for discussing the future of the company together and how we can do better. In this entry I’ll just cover the first day.
The Malaysians were up early on Monday morning to catch a bus to Singapore where the cruise was leaving from.
On the bus there, everyone was still half asleep. Rachel was wide awake and she tried to get us to play some games but the attempt failed. We were all just too tired. Some 5 or more hours later we found ourselves in Singapore and had our first little crisis on the trip. The bus driver had no clue where the Singapore Cruise Terminal was and we were already late for the boarding. At one point the bus driver stopped the bus at the side of the road and waved down a cab to ask for directions.
When we finally got to the cruise terminal and met up with the Singapore Nuffies we were really really late. Still Ming suggested we take a group picture before we go in (living life of the edge) so we did. Then we ran over to the check-in counter only to find out that the check-in counter closed some 15 minutes ago. A Caucasian man dressed in uniform who looked like part of the crew looked really pissed off. We begged…. and he let us through. We filled in whatever forms we could and hopped on to the ship.
Once we got on we all split up to get settled in our rooms. Ming and I chose to share a slightly bigger room so that there was a place we could all hang out together in private on the ship.
Once we chucked our bags in our rooms, we all met up at the swimming pool of the ship which was at one of the top decks. There we all sat around some deck chairs, had a briefing and played a game called “2 truths 1 lie”.
It’s where each of us will go up one by one and then tell 3 things about yourself. Everyone then had to guess which one was the lie. Eventhough I shared an office with many of the Nuffies and some I had known for years…. I found myself learning some new things about them. Later on we all decided to split up and take a tour of the ship.
This is Robb, Yuen, Elise, Clara and me at the ship’s indoor pool area they called the Solarium. It was made to look a bit like some sort of Roman bath. The main atrium area of the ship too was beautiful. This is how it looks like inside the ship.
Really looks like a hotel huh.
During the tour, Angeline really wanted to go to what she referred to as the “Titanic” part of the ship. After some querying, we figured out that it meant the front of the ship where Jack and Rose did their romantic Titanic scene.
So we brought her there.
And we took some pictures there. Here’s me with Angeline.
Angeline is an accountant who used to work in KPMG but now leads the Finance part of our company. So anything from sending blogger cheques, approving payments etc etc… all goes through her.
Angeline, Linda and I got there in time to catch the sunset. So we decided to take some pictures there.
After sunset we all went back to our rooms and got ready for dinner. We met for dinner at the dinner hall on the ship they called the “Romeo & Juliet” dining hall. It was beautiful!
Our group took up a few tables. Here’s one of them.
The food on the ship was free and it was great fine dining food. The menu had everything from Steak, Fish, Chicken or even Lamb. Whatever you chose.
You can choose to order however many Appetizers, Desserts or even Main Courses that you want. Our in-house “Eating Monster” Yuen Yee on average there ate 2 Appetizers, Desserts and Main Courses per meal on the ship. The dessert was always something I looked forward to though. Always some really good stuff.
I went around the rest of the night taking some pictures with the rest of the Nuffies around and here are the pictures I ended up with. Here’s me with Melissa and Hui Wen from Singapore.
Me with Michelle, Jestina, Rachel and Clara.
From the left, Michelle, Jestina, Rachel, Clara, Melissa, Hui Wen, Me, Nicholas , Tim2 and Linda.
Also took this random candid picture of Jestina, Rachel and Clara. Don’t know what they were looking at.
And finally me here with Nicholas, Tim2 and Linda.
After dinner we all adjourned to the highest point that we could go to in the ship. You see this round glass thing that overlooks the pool on top of the ship?
That whole area… is actually a club. So we spent the first night in that club dancing and drinking away. We had a lot of drinks and over 50 shots there the whole night playing lots of drinking games.
By the end of the night, some of us were really really drunk. I survived this night though… (not one of the later nights though but I will get to that later).
It was a great first night and a great beginning to our first company trip with the Nuffies.
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space